I've left my BAP behind in Kansas for the weekend. I'll be blogging about other matters in the meantime, until next Monday.

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I share at least two aspects of "religious people"--a sense of awe that anything exists at all and that I am alive, (a sense of the sublime), and a sense of ethics. What I lack is a belief in a religious "calculus"--"perform these ritual sacrifices correctly and you will triumph in the next battle," or, "believe in this particular bill of particulars and you will receive these benefits." Consequently, I also lack the notion that one of these calculi, one particular story of how ethics, awe at being alive, and the rest fit together, can be established as superior to any other such story. I am not that interested in the idea of an afterlife, or in establishing the nature of what it is that I am in awe of. I am also deeply skeptical that we, anyone, can put everything together in a coherent way. Since anyone can feel a sense of awe at creation, everyone can be equally religious.